'Hard News': Troubled Times
Date: 26 December 2004
By Timothy Noah
Timothy Noah
Timothy Noah reviews book Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media by Seth Mnookin; photo (M)
Reluare sâmbătă, 25 decembrie 2004
25 decembrie 2004 era un sâmbătă sub semnul stelut al lui ♑. Era ziua 359 din an. Președintele Statelor Unite a fost George W. Bush.
Dacă te-ai născut în această zi, ai 21 ani. Ultima ta zi de naștere a avut loc acum joi, 25 decembrie 2025, 165 zile. Următoarea ta zi de naștere este pe vineri, 25 decembrie 2026, peste 199 zile. Ați trăit 7.835 zile sau aproximativ 188.061 ore sau aproximativ 11.283.711 minute sau aproximativ 677.022.660 secunde.
Câteva persoane care împărtășesc această zi de naștere:
25th of December 2004 News
Știri așa cum au apărut pe prima pagină a New York Times la 25 decembrie 2004
Back to Russia, With Love
Date: 26 December 2004
By Peter Landesman
Peter Landesman
Paul Klebnikov was different from other foreign journalists in Russia not because of his brooding determination or his courage -- both of which he possessed in ample supply -- but because he thought of the country as a calling more than as a reporting post. Since the early 90's, he had been exposing in the pages of Forbes magazine the nexus of business, politics and gangsterism in the former Soviet Union with an almost missionary zeal. He knew that such work could be lethal: 10 Russian journalists had been murdered in contract killings since Putin came to power. But Klebnikov believed in Russian redemption. In an editorial in the first issue of Forbes Russia -- which began publishing in April, with Klebnikov as editor -- he declared that Russia had entered a more civilized stage of development. He started telling his friends and colleagues that he was sure the lawless days were over. He was even considering moving his wife and three children from New York to Moscow. But his hopefulness proved ill founded. On the night of July 9, Klebnikov, 41, was assassinated, shot four times from the window of a speeding Lada outside his Moscow office. Those who were closest to Klebnikov understand that his doggedness in the face of grave risk was part of a lifelong quest to explain his personal attachment to Russia. Klebnikov spoke Russian fluently and grew up in New York, a scion of the White Russian diaspora, the czarist aristocracy and intelligentsia who fled the country ahead of the 1917 Revolution. He was raised to remember his revolutionary Decembrist ancestors, exiled in 1826 after being abandoned by their leaders. His great-grandfather, an admiral in the Imperial Navy, was murdered by mutineers during the Revolution.
Spitzer Says He Won't Drop Any Inquiries Begun by State
Date: 26 December 2004
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York said yesterday that he did not intend to cede to the federal government any of his existing or previous investigations into business practices. Criticizing a front-page article in The New York Times yesterday about his plans, Mr. Spitzer issued a statement saying that increased regulatory activity by the federal government, particularly the Securities and Exchange Commission, made it more likely that Washington would take the lead or act alone in new investigations. But he said that his office would not withdraw from cases in which it is now actively involved, calling the notion ''absurd.''
A Web Offer Too Good to Be True? Read the Fine Print
Date: 26 December 2004
By Barbara Whitaker
Barbara Whitaker
THE e-mail messages are tantalizing: ''Join now and receive a free I.B.M. laptop.'' ''Your complimentary iPod with free shipping is waiting.'' These offers and similar ones on the Internet promise gifts for buying products or services. Are they for real? At best, yes, but they can also be riddled with problems. Participants may have to spend a lot to qualify or may not get the reward if they fail to follow what can be complicated rules. Ultimately, they may end up with nothing more than a big increase in spam as their e-mail address and other information is passed along or sold.
A Star Columnist
Date: 26 December 2004
By Maureen Dowd
Maureen Dowd
I first realized that writing a column could be a good gig when I saw all the cute guys clustered around Mary McGrory's desk in the back of The Washington Star newsroom, hard-boiled political reporters acting as adoring as Las Vegas chorus boys. But while my status changed over the decades, as I slowly clambered up from Star clerk to Times columnist, Mary's status never changed. Maria Gloria, as she signed her handwritten notes in her beloved Italian -- she was the last person who loved the U.S. Mail -- was always the same bella figura: She Who Must Be Obeyed. I tried to learn from her. Not about cooking. Her Jell-O Surprise was frightening and her meatloaf worse. And it was impossible to write as she did. It was a truth universally acknowledged, as her idol Jane Austen wrote, that nobody could write with the sense and sensibility, the luminous prose and legendary reporting, of Mary McGrory. But I emulated her other talents: Her uncanny ability, even in remote parts of New Hampshire or Ireland, to find some sucker to carry her bags or drive her car. The way she nobly resisted the passing fad called technology, often writing in longhand when her laptop -- or ''fiendish little gadget,'' as she called it -- gave her fits. The way she acted helpless like a barracuda. From Joe McCarthy to Henry Kissinger to Robert McNamara to Linda Tripp, every public figure learned to beware when Mary started asking confused and innocent-sounding questions, like some Capitol Hill Columbo. Mary became a star at The Star with her courageous coverage of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. It was my dad, Mike Dowd, a D.C. police inspector who was in charge of Senate security for 20 years, who helped Mary get her big break by giving her a front-row seat for the spectacle. ''He wanted to help out a nice Irish girl,'' my brother, a Senate page at the time, remembered. Mary always got her way -- one way or another. When her editor at The Washington Post -- where she moved after The Star folded -- told her he did not have an extra pass for her to get into the Clarence Thomas hearings, Mary was displeased. Shortly thereafter, the editor was watching the hearings on TV and suddenly saw Mary being escorted to a front-row seat by the committee chairman, Joe Biden. Mary loved The Star and Rome and rogues and children and losers and underdogs and Jack Kennedy. ''He walked like a panther,'' she told me. She did not love, as her nephew Brian McGrory, the Boston Globe columnist, said, pomposity or self-involvement or bullies or Richard Nixon. She was very proud of being on his enemies' list. She hated blowhards. Once she wanted to get away from John Volpe, who had been in the Nixon cabinet, when he was droning on at her during a party at the Shoreham Hotel. ''Hey,'' she interrupted him finally, ''you were the secretary of transportation. Where are the elevators?'' And away she went. Mary treated the powerful and the powerless the same, with what her Post editor Bill Hamilton called an exasperated ''Good help is hard to get'' manner. When I was a cub reporter at The Star, she invited me to one of her A-list Sunday brunches. Only 25, I thought, sashaying up to her apartment in my best outfit, and I have already entered the sanctum sanctorum of Washington politics. When Mary pointed me toward the blender and told me to make a daiquiri for Teddy Kennedy, I realized I was not there as a guest. At least I was in good company. George Stephanopoulos, a Dick Gephardt staff member, was passing canapés. Mary's servants had an excellent record of upward mobility. She also shanghaied me to come swim with the kids from St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home in Ethel Kennedy's pool at Hickory Hill in McLean, Va., on Wednesday afternoons. At the time, I was working in a different suburb in a different state, Rockville, Md., and I didn't know how to swim. But Mary didn't let me weasel out of it. Mangling, intentionally perhaps, my editor's name, she instructed him to give me Wednesday afternoons off. ''Yes, Mary,'' he replied, humbly, gratefully. Over the years, she would continue to call me with other offers I couldn't refuse. She wanted me to come to Ireland in May 1998. We would cover the peace referendum and have a fun girls' bonding trip, she said. There was no chance to bond, of course. On the train from Dublin to Belfast, after staying up all night on the plane, Mary interviewed everyone at the station, everyone on the train, including the lame woman whom she got to carry her bags, the cabdriver on the way to the hotel, the waitress at the hotel coffee shop, the room-service waiter carrying our tea and the priest at Sunday Mass. Another time, in the Clinton years, she telephoned and said in a chirpy voice, ''Let's go see Yasir Arafat at the White House and then go shopping!'' Mary continued to call me after she had a stroke in March 2003. You could understand a bit here or there -- ''casserole'' or ''Cheney.'' It broke my heart to hear the words coming out so jumbled, from lips that never uttered a less than perfect sentence. Once, in a private diary of The Star's final days in 1981, Mary had written, ''I do not want anyone to think I have collapsed under calamity.'' She never did. She approached life and sickness and death with the same Yankee pluck she developed at Girls' Latin School in Boston. I will continue to emulate Mary and follow the invaluable advice she once gave her nephew Brian at a stuffy Washington party: ''Always approach the shrimp bowl like you own it.''
World Business Briefing | The Americas: Peru: Free Trade Pact Expected
Date: 25 December 2004
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Alfredo Ferrero, Peru's minister of foreign trade, says he expects Peru to complete free trade agreement with United States by July (S)
World Business Briefing | Europe: Italy: Enel To Buy Wireless Unit
Date: 25 December 2004
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Enel, Italy's biggest utility, seeks to buy Ipse 2000, Italian wireless company that never started service, for as much as 792 euros ($1.07 billion) to gain tax benefits (S)
World Business Briefing | Europe: Switzerland: Bank To Sell Warburg Stake
Date: 25 December 2004
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Credit Suisse Group agrees to sell 19.9 percent stake in Warburg Pincus that it acquired in 1999 back to Warburg Pincus for undisclosed sum (S)
World Business Briefing | The Americas: Canada: Vote On Gold Mine Takeover
Date: 25 December 2004
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Glamis Gold's hostile bid for Goldcorp of Canada, valued at 3.6 billion Canadian dollars ($2.9 billion), depends on whether Goldcorp shareholders reject plan to acquire Wheaton River Minerals and have Wheaton chief executive Ian Telfer lead combined company; photo (S)
Russian Electric Utility to Be Broken Up in Deregulation
Date: 25 December 2004
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Russian government approves plans to break up Unified Energy System, world's largest electric utility, in effort to deregulate country's power market to attract foreign investment and reduce costs for manufacturers; utilities will be split into generation, sales and grid companies, with Russia holding 52 percent of generating businesses (M)